IBIT
Engages with industry to develop digital knowledge and talent
The Institute for Business and Information Technology announces the 2024 scholarship recipients.
IBIT Cencora Scholarship
Yanelly Yanes
IBIT Kyndryl Scholarship
Zuzana Tyryllo
IBIT Pfizer Scholarship
Abby Dorotov
IBIT Scholastic Scholarship
Sarah Maher
IBIT’s Spring 2024 mentoring program which involved 16 students and 12 mentors ended the year with a reception for mentors and mentees to network. The average impact rating of the program was 6.3 on a scale from 1 to 7 with 7 being the highest.
IBIT matches Temple University students with senior executive IT mentors based on students’ interests and career goals using a structured process to ensure regular engagement. The mentoring program runs each term and has, to-date, served 189 students from three different schools at Temple since spring 2020.
The high impact rating of 6.1 suggests that students and mentors are on average very positive about all aspects of the program. The highest rating was for the value of participation at 6.8, while the lowest rating of 5.79 was for enhancing professional network. However, this is still a positive result since both mentors and mentees contributed to the rating. The following comments illustrate the impact:
I was very nervous at first going into my first meeting but coming from my own experience, it was easier than I thought it was going to be to talk to my mentor and things just felt natural. I believe that I gained a lot of valuable knowledge and lessons from my mentor’s advice and experiences which makes me glad I did the program.
MENTEE
It’s fun giving guidance, especially surfacing career options the mentees may have not considered yet.
MENTOR
MENTORING PROGRAM PARTICIPANTS
| Mentors | Mentees | Mentees |
|---|---|---|
| Andrea Anania, Cigna (retired) Sondra Barbour, AGCO & Perspecta Chris Cera, Arcweb Technologies Craig Conway, FIS Kevin Dang, McKinsey & Company Larry Dignan, Constellation Insights Bruce Fadem, Wyeth (retired) Chris Kearns, Kyndryl Michael Luckenbill, Capgemini Neil Mundell, Cencora Sukumar Narayanan, CorVant Niraj Patel, Greystone Rich Rivara, Wave6 Dave Woodson, KPMG | Tyler Allen Sajjad Alloo Rhenece Andrew Nikitha Arramada Janice Augastine Duncan Carpenter James Carpenter Sarah D’Amico Victoria Doan Nahum Elias Nora Esack Adam Foster-Baird Jenna Fraioli Jonathan George Joseph Gorman Emily Greene | Evangelos Kamariotis Carly Krieger David Levit Veronica Li David Liang Aaron Markowitz Mia Myers Theresa Nguyen Alex O’Leary Alison Park Odalys Perez Victoria Phung Cole Roberts Kamilya Salikhova Nayana Santhosh Biko Smith Maya Smith |
Sondra Barbour, Board Member, AGCO & Perspecta is the chair of the Mentoring Program. Laurel Miller manages the mentoring program for IBIT.
For more details about the impact assessment, visit: https://ibit.temple.edu/impact/
The Digital Innovation Foundry is pleased to announce that UfarmX is the recipient of the Spring 2024 Digital Innovation Award!
UfarmX is a tech-driven agricultural platform, founded by Alexander Zanders, Andrea Kamara Dunbar and Segun Fagbami that utilizes AI and Blockchain solutions to empower smallholder farmers in Africa. They provide tailored support for crop management, market access and financial inclusion as well smart farming practices.
UfarmX was selected to receive $2,500 and support from DIF to further develop and commercialize its platform.
The Digital Innovation Award is open to all Temple University students, alumni, faculty, and staff. The award is presented by DIF in partnership with Temple University’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Institute (IEI) Be Your Own Boss Bowl. Awards are based on the following criteria:
Dinesh Desai and colleagues grew Emtec into a high performing mid-market IT services firm, by creating a unique culture, acquiring firms, and digital co-innovation.
In the newly published case titled Emtec: Culture, Acquisitions, and Co-innovation as the Upstream Future for Midmarket Firms, Munir Mandviwalla, Larry Dignan, Laurel Miller, and Bertrand Guillotin tell the story of a how a start-up grew through acquisitions and an entrepreneurial cooperative culture in the cut-throat trillion-dollar IT services market. The case also shows how co-innovation enables digital transformation.
The case is dedicated to Dinesh Desai, Fox’78, founder, CEO, and Chairman of Emtec. He received the 2015 Fox IT Award for Distinguished Alumni and served on the IBIT board. Dinesh passed away on March 27, 2024.
Note: Colleagues of Dinesh interested in reading the case, please contact ibit@temple.edu
Mike Marzano, mobile solutions analyst and Emily Rattner, business solutions analyst, at Cencora, led a workshop on Exploring Virtual Reality and Bots on April 3, 2024.
The 15 workshop attendees consisted of graduate and undergraduate students from three different schools at Temple.
The participants learned how Cencora is creating immersive spaces and how they build RPA bots.
